1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a feeding apparatus including a feeder (e.g., a feeding roller) that is driven or operated (e.g., rotated) by a motor (e.g., an electric motor) so as to feed an object to a target stop position, and also relates to an image forming system employing the feeding apparatus so as to feed a recording medium.
2. Discussion of Related Art
There is known a serial-type inkjet printer that records an image on a recording sheet by repeating (a) an operation to control an electric motor so as to rotate a feeding roller to feed the sheet to an image-recording position and stop the sheet at that position, and (b) an operation to move, at the image-recording position, a recording head in a main scanning direction perpendicular to the direction of feeding of recording sheet, so that the recording head ejects, according to image data, droplets of ink toward the recording sheet so as to record the image on the sheet.
Thus, at the image-recording position, it is needed to feed and stop the recording sheet, each time the recording head performs one-time scanning movement. However, if an actual stop position where the recording sheet is actually stopped is deviated from a target stop position, a white or thick “stripe” occurs to an image recorded the sheet, which damages a clear recording of image.
Hence, generally, an inkjet printer is operated such that each time a recording head performs one scanning movement, the printer controls a feeding speed of a feeding roller, as indicated by a solid line in FIG. 10A, while monitoring, with an encoder, a current position of a recording sheet fed by the feeding roller.
More specifically described, in a conventional printer disclosed by, e.g., Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2002-128313, an electric motor is first accelerated and then decelerated so that a feeding speed (i.e., a rotation speed) of a feeding roller is lowered, near a target stop position, to a sufficiently low speed and, when a recording sheet reaches a “motor-off” position before the target stop position by a predetermined distance, a, the supplying of electric current to the motor is stopped, so that the feeding roller is allowed to be rotated by its inertia and then stopped naturally. Thus, the driving of the feeding roller is controlled so that the roller may be stopped at the target stop position.